la rutas

for all of you who like taking public transportation, the rutas in Cuernavaca are a trip. they are these mini-buses, in varying condition, and every driver has wall hangins and decorations inside to personalize their bus. favorite soccer teams are a pretty common theme, but one I was on had a tweety bird theme!! to take them, you have to know the city pretty well, like where exactly you are going and where you want to get on and off because there is no map or schedule. You just look for a bus that has the place where you want to go in the window. And if you get on the wrong bus, you can't always just walk across the street and wait for a new one because the routes back are different. That hasn't happened to me yet, thank goodness, but it is something you have to check all the time. And sometimes even routes with the same numbers say they are going different places.

To top it off, I think the ruta drivers have a year-long race going on. One day I was on one that was ripping around corners and making some crazy driving moves just to pass the other rutas in front. yesderday my ruta driver was getting super mad at the bad traffic, and layed on his horn about once every minute. they like driving fast, and if they can't they get really frustrated and try and cram into spots that are definitely not big enough. Then there are some stops where they get a card punched to record what time they arrived at the stop. I know it is to measure effeciency, but I like to think they are keeping records and at the end of the year one ruta driver will win the ruta cup or something.